


My Pretty Irish Girl

by SegaBarrett



Category: Hell on Wheels (TV)
Genre: AU - Elam Lives, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3462398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve years later, lives go on, in Cheyenne and New York. And two are about to collide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Pretty Irish Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Hell on Wheels, and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: I hope you like this! It kind of drifted away from your prompts and sort of went every which way.

Elam had been watching her for weeks now. It had taken him eleven years, and talking to countless people, looking up countless records, finding people who would actually be willing to talk to him. But there she was. Or rather, there they were. Declan Toole and the young girl who people had explained was his niece, Rose Anne. 

He had only caught glimpses so far, as following around a twelve year old, a twelve year old white girl, wasn’t going to look to anyone. Even if, maybe especially if, he explained. He also wasn’t ready. Not yet. Not ready to shatter the illusion. 

She looked happy. She’d grown up tall for her age, with long brown hair that was tied into a braid with a purple ribbon. And he could still remember her eyes – blue eyes. The eyes that made it unlikely that she was his. Unlikely, yes, but maybe not impossible, because didn’t that jack ass back at the plantation who’d been Elam’s father and master have blue eyes? Elam had had a lot of time to read in the past twelve years, and this new thing called genetics was nothing if not riddled with exceptions to rules. Exceptions called recessive genes.

If he’d known about this stuff when he’d known Eva…

But he had been a different man then. 

***

To Rose Anne Toole, Uncle Declan was her world. He’d brought her up from when she was a baby, a tiny thing swaddled in his arms as he crossed the country on a railway car, leaving the wilds of Cheyenne for the safety of New York City.

They lived in an apartment on the tenth story of a building that seemed to cut the sky in half. Rose could peek out the big windows and see the clouds. Sometimes she wondered if that’s what Heaven was like, people lounging on those clouds, and sometimes she tried to turn to the side so maybe she’d catch a glimpse of them if they didn’t know she was looking.

They weren’t rich, but they had enough money to get some nice things. She always had new clothes and she went to a nice school where the girls came from all kinds of what the headmistress called “respectable families”.

Rose figured her family was respectable enough too, though she wished she knew more about her parents. Her father had died before she was born, and Uncle Declan never told her much about her mother other than that she’d stayed in Cheyenne and sent Uncle Declan back with baby Rose rather than marry him. 

“Why didn’t she marry you, though?” Rose had asked him once, thinking that she could have never sent her own baby away, never to see him or her again.

Uncle Declan had shrugged.

“She loved another, m’dear. Last thing she did was name you. But she loved ya, she knew it was too dangerous out there. No place fitting for a babe.”

“But did you want to marry her?” 

Declan shrugged.

“’twasn’t right. She loved someone else.”

***

“Morning, Eva.”

Eva Toole looked up from the jar she was holding. They were standing in the middle of the General Store in the town of Cheyenne.

“Oh… Hi, Ruth.” She gave a forced smile. “How are you?”

“Very well, thank you,” Ruth replied with an equally forced polite nod. “How are you really?”

Eva looked away. 

“It’s one of those days, I suppose. One of those days I’ve been thinking on Elam.”

“Oh, Eva. You just have to trust that he got somewhere safe. That the Lord ushered him on to… to somewhere he’d be all right.”

“I appreciate the thought, Ruth. It’s a nice one. But I know the truth. Sometimes, though… I wonder if he might have caught up with our baby… with my baby.” She put the jar back on the shelf. “It gets lonely out here, I guess. I thought about moving, but… something keeps me here.”

Ruth nodded.

“I understand. I… was going to take my church back east, but something… I think they need me here. My congregation is here.”

Eva picked up a tin of salt.

“Cullen Bohannon is here,” she pointed out. “Do you think that might have something to do with why you haven’t left?”

“Oh… No. That… was a long time ago, when I felt that way about Cullen… Now we’re just… I just like to help out. Naomi has her hands full with all of those children to look after.”

“How many do they have now?” Eva inquired, thinking about her own baby, out there in the world. She wouldn’t ever have another one. She couldn’t go through that again. But it seemed as if Naomi and Cullen had taken it upon themselves to populate the whole town of Cheyenne.

“Five,” Ruth said, “There were six, originally, but… one didn’t make it out of the first day.” She bowed her head in silent prayer for the little lost soul, then picked up a jar of her own. “Ezra and I were about to go over and cook dinner for them. Did you want to come?”

Eva blushed.

“I… Sure.” Anything to get Elam out of her head, the way he’d been the last time she’d seen him, out of his mind with rage. He must have burnt out along the way. He couldn’t still be alive this many years later. She should give up hope; it would only hurt her in the end.

***

Uncle Declan had told Rose earlier that day that he had a surprise for her, before he had walked her to school and headed off to work. Rose hoped it was a present – he’d always been pretty free with any excuse to buy her something nice and new and shiny, even if it cost a lot of money that he didn’t always have. She was his “pretty Irish girl”, his to spoil, and even when Rose tried to think of things sensibly and financially, he’d cut her off and tell her it was a man’s duty to buy nice things for the women in his life and a woman’s duty to just say thank you and wear them.

She walked home from school, as she did every day, stopping in a sweet shop to purchase a treat with a few pennies she had in her pocket. It was a good day. She’d gotten called on only once, but she had known the answer to the question so she hadn’t had to fear the ridicule of her classmates or wrath of her teacher.

With her sweets procured, she made her way home. The door was unlocked when she got there – Declan must have gotten home ahead of her. She turned the knob and stepped into the apartment, and let out a gasp at the sight that greeted her.

Declan was sitting across from a brown-haired woman of about the same age, and it was obvious from the look in each of their eyes that they’d just gotten done kissing, or something similar.

“Who’s she?” Rose asked, putting her hand on her hips. The words were thick with her Irish brogue. 

“Ay, Rose, my love.”

“Who’s she?” Rose repeated again. Her heart was pounding, and she realized that the answer couldn’t be a good one. She didn’t even know this woman, but every sense in her body was sending up signals telling Rose that she was bad news. But Declan’s eyes were shining. He obviously didn’t see it.

“Rose, my love, this is Kathleen. She is going to be my new wife.”

Kathleen stood up and gave Rose a smile that Rose instantly tagged as false. 

“I know it’s difficult,” she said in a sweet voice. “But I’m going to be a part of your family now.”

Rose crossed her arms in front of her chest, but she didn’t speak up. There was no denying the look in Declan’s eyes. He was in love, and there was no one who could tell him any different. 

She couldn’t help feeling that she’d been replaced.

***

Elam paced back and forth on the street corner, flipping through the day’s newspaper and feeling, not for the first time, that he’d been thrust into a world that wasn’t meant to have him in it. He had found himself thinking of Eva yet again, and wondering if she was even still alive. If she was out there, was she somehow thinking of him? 

He’d picked up odd jobs here and there, but no one had been very eager to hire a man who wouldn’t bow, who wouldn’t kneel, and who didn’t seem to belong in any one place. The only place he had fit had been Hell on Wheels, and even that had been torn away from him. He had followed Bohannon and then the bear had gotten into his head, and then for a long time he hadn’t been fit to be around anyone. He hadn’t been safe.

Now, he was safe. At least he thought he was. Age was taking a lot of the fight out of him. He was less likely to lift his fists in response to comments by white men, and he couldn’t imagine flirting with a white woman, or any woman, these days.

There was only the changing of scenery until he had found this section of New York, and he had found Rose. She was a reminder of everything he had lost, everything that he and Eva could have had. But he didn’t want to step in, not yet. What could he offer the girl?

His life was not one that could be recommended. His life was not one that even he himself was pleased to have led.

But there was something to it, there had to be something to it. If not, why stay alive all these years at all, in this half-state?

There was an answer, and he would find it.

He watched as the girl, his daughter, Rose, tied a purple ribbon in her hair and turned to smile at someone.

He pretended that it was at him. That somehow, deep inside her head and heart, she knew.

***

Uncle Declan sounded, at first, like he had a frog in his throat. Like he was having some trouble catching his breath.

“It’s nothing, Rose,” he told her. “It’ll pass. I’ve been through worse, my child.” Rose knew what he was referring to, thinking of the dead brother he’d left behind in that far-away place. The place she had begun to see in her dreams with a kind of nervous trepidation, some sort of urge to go there because that had been the place of her origin, the place where she had once belonged as she now belonged in New York.

“But Uncle Declan,” Rose piped up, “Maybe you should go to a doctor.”

“Silly child,” cut in Kathleen – Aunt Kathleen as Rose had been directed to call her – “We don’t have money for that. Not that they’d want to look at some dirty Irish anyway, no matter how much money we’d have. They hate us. Now stop talking about things you know nothing about.”

Rose stared at Declan as his face grew paler. She felt another surge of dislike for Kathleen, but she nodded. Things would turn out all right in the end, wouldn’t they? They had to.

***

It was dark in Eva’s bed. It had always been dark, ever since the day Elam had left. The day he’d left before he’d returned once but never held her again, never told her that he loved her. He had fought her. He had wanted to hurt her.

But he hadn’t. She had offered herself over to him and part of her still wished that he had accepted. Maybe she would be in some twisted bondage with him, as his slave in this bizarre fantasy that had taken over his head, but at least they would be together and she would know if he was alive, if he was okay.

She closed her eyes against the dark and pretended that instead of the nothingness, Elam was there, his arms around her and holding her close. Breathing into her ear and whispering her name. Her name had never sounded as beautiful as when he said it, the way he made her want to cling to him and to never let go again. 

Eva remembered that first day, the day she’d been wearing that black hat and even though she had laughed at him, even then she had wanted him deep in her soul. It was as if she had remembered him, as if they had been together in the past, coupled together when they were just dust in the sky or whatever they had come from. 

“Elam,” she whispered the name as if it was a magic word, as if it could bring him back. She had been saying the same word for twelve years. It hadn’t worked yet. But some part of her hoped. Some part of her. 

She pulled the blanket over herself. It got so cold at night. 

***

Declan’s feet were poking out from under the blanket. That was the first thing that Rose noticed. The next thing she noticed is that they were tinged red, like he’d been sitting in a hot bath too long.

“My dear, come here, please,” he told her, barely above a whisper. His voice was raspy, and listening to it was like a cut against her stomach. She walked closer to him and crouched down. “My pretty Irish girl,” he whispered, and started to softly sing the song he’d sung for her when she had been a little girl, “Oh you are my dear, my darling one…”

Rose bit her lip hard to keep from crying. 

“Uncle Declan, what’s going on? You’re really sick.”

“I am, my love. That’s why I… if things get bad, as I fear they may, I need to tell you a few things.”

Rose grabbed his hand.

“Like what?” she asked him. 

Declan struggled to sit up in his bed.

“Rose, when you were born… well… before you were born… Your mother… the man she was in love with, she… ay, you may not understand how it works. I hope that you don’t. But the man who Eva, your mother, stayed with after I left, he might have been your father. He wasn’t sure, and my brother Gregory had died before you were born. It was a battle. The other man didn’t want to let you go, but Eva gave you to me. Thought you’d be safer in New York. So… I thought I knew. I mean, to me, you look like me. Like Gregory. But I need you to know that… this other man must still think of you as his.”

“But how?” Rose asked. “How would you know that? You said you hadn’t seen that man since the day you left that place.”

“Because he’s in New York,” Declan whispered. “I caught a glimpse of him. I would know him anywhere. I never wanted you to know because… no matter what, I always thought of you as his. As ours. My blood, my responsibility. But I fear…I fear I may have let my heart blind my head, blind my senses. Kathleen is not the woman that I thought I was falling in love with, and I fear that she may suspect something of your true background, or be able to pretend that she does.”

“What do you mean, Uncle Declan? What are you talking about?”

“I mean… that I’m not so sure about Kathleen anymore. When we were married, I was sure. Now… I feel like I’m seeing another side of her.” Declan reached out and clasped her hands in his. “You are going to grow up to be a beautiful young woman. But you are going to need someone to look out for you, to keep you safe. If you need… a place to go… 55 North 15th Street. That is the place he is staying.”

“Uncle Declan but… you’re the one who looks out for me. You’re the one who keeps me safe.”

He patted Rose’s hand.

“I don’t think I have much time left, honey. It’s time to go… time to go back. One day, I’ll see you there.”

“But you need a doctor! We can’t seriously… No. I’m not going to…”

“You keep yourself safe. The man’s name is Elam Ferguson.”

The door opened and Kathleen sauntered in.

“Rose!” Her voice had risen to be much harsher than before. “Look at how tired you’re making him! You can’t bother him with your silly kid stuff right now, don’t you understand? Get out of here!”

Rose ran out of the room and threw herself on her own bed, sobbing.

***

“You’ve been sitting around feeling sorry for yourself all day, Eva,” Ruth told her, concerned. “What is it today that’s different from any other day? It’s been more than ten years. I thought that you were… well, through this.”

“Like you’re through with Cullen Bohannon?” Eva shot back, raising an eyebrow. Ruth sighed.

“That’s different. This isn’t… doing me any damage. Waiting around for Elam is. You need to find something that’s just for you. Something to live for. Something like… I have my church. You need something, too.”

“You say it hasn’t done any damage,” Eva replied. “But it has. You could’ve moved on. You could have gone anywhere else in the world. But you stayed with this railroad, following it around, chasing after something you can’t have.”

“And you’re waiting for him to come back. You’re waiting for him to follow this railroad…”

“Can we talk about something other than Cullen and Elam?” Eva snapped suddenly. “Seems like we spend all our time talking about those two. They’ve run us ragged enough without even being here, I don’t know why we ought to help them do it better.”

Ruth shrugged.

“It seems to be something they’re good at,” she agreed. “But it’s not like we’re not good at things too. Remember Charlotte? You got her that job years ago, and now she’s… well, she’s something, isn’t she?”

Eva smiled.

“She could buy and sell most of us in town these days. I don’t know why she never decided to get up and go somewhere else, though. Who would want to stay in this depressing town?”

Ruth shrugged.

“We did.”

“Maybe that was part of it. If it’s familiar… You don’t want to leave it behind. It’s hard to go.”

“You don’t know what there is out there. Whether there is anything. Sometimes I feel like the whole world begins and ends in Cheyenne, even though I know that’s not true.”

“Yeah… But Ruth, you’ve seen other places. You didn’t grow up here.”

“Neither did you,” Ruth pointed out, “You traveled with the Indians… You lived in a whole different way than anyone else. A world I can’t ever understand.”

“You’re thinking about that Joseph now, aren’t you?”

“Thought we were going to spend a whole conversation not talking about men,” Ruth replied, flustered.

“Thought we just agreed to Cullen and Elam.”

“Well… let’s extend it. Let’s just talk about, I don’t know… Us.”

“Us. Sounds nice. Sounds real nice.”

***

“Rise and shine.”

Rose opened her eyes and stared out of her bed at the shadow of Kathleen.

“What?” she asked.

“I didn’t ask for what. I said rise and shine. This is your last day lying about this house getting everything that you ask for. Declan spoiled you and I’m not going to have it.”

Rose sat up and stared at her.

“What are you talking about? What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to work!”

“Work at what?” Rose inquired.

“At anything! I’m not going to support you! You are the most spoiled I have ever seen. Well I say, missy,” Kathleen put her hand on her hip here, “When I was your age my parents worked me from dawn til dusk and I were glad of it. Your uncle is dyin’ in his bed and I’m not taking care’a the both a’ya.”

“But where would I work at? Uncle Declan wanted me to go to college! To learn things. I was going to…”

But by this point, Kathleen was already chasing her out the door.

“A-na don’t come back without money.”

Rose grumbled and slipped around the back of the house. This was ridiculous. What was wrong with this lady anyway? She wasn’t even related to Rose. Not to mention, she didn’t have the first idea of where she would go to get a job. It wasn’t as if it was that uncommon for twelve year olds to work, but Declan had always wanted her to mix with people who were more upper-class, and those kids didn’t work.

Seeing no easy way to get in, she figured she would walk. Maybe she’d even come up with a job idea, not that Uncle Declan would put up with this when he found out. Boy, would he be mad. So mad that he might throw Aunt Kathleen out on her rear once and for all. 

***

“Hello, Ruth.” Cullen Bohannon had answered the door with a small smile. Maybe in a different world, in a different life, he and Ruth could have been together. He had felt it, but he hadn’t let himself feel it until it was too late and he had married Naomi.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love the woman, not at all, but it had been a marriage to save his own skin. It hadn’t been like with Mary… Or how it might have been with Lily. That evil Swede had snatched Lily from his hands in the same way that he’d driven hi, into Naomi’s. But that was all in the past.

Thinking of those days hurt too much. Those days made him think of Elam Ferguson. His partner in crime, the man he had promised he would be friends with until the end of time. But he didn’t know where that man was now, and he doubted if he would ever know. He was probably dead somewhere, with no one to mourn him. He’d known enough people who had ended up like that. Hell, it had almost been his fate more than once. And Elam had been a rough sort of man. He’d have wanted to go out that way. Cullen had wondered more than once why he hadn’t just put Elam down when he’d tried to kill him. Why had he given him that one chance to get back on his horse and ride? After ending so many other lives, why had this been the one he just couldn’t do, even though it seemed like it might be a mercy under the circumstances?

“Hello, Cullen,” Ruth said kindly, smiling at him. “How are the children? How are you doing?”

“They’re doing great,” Cullen said, a bit gruffly. These conversations were so awkward between them, given all that seemed to be floating around, left unsaid, but even more so today. He had been talking to Naomi the night before, and the woman had politely and quietly suggested the most outlandish idea he’d ever heard in his life. He probably should have seen it coming in hindsight.

Everything had been some shade of normal until she’d smiled at him and suggested, “Why don’t we take in Ruth? As a sister wife? I’ve seen the way you look at her sometimes, and I’m not… hurt. This is the way it’s supposed to be. You should do it. Maybe you would be happy.”

Cullen had pushed away from her without saying a word in reply, thinking to himself that one dead wife and one living one was already too complicated for him. What in the world would he do with two? And if he had two, would he be expected to have more? How did this even work? 

He brushed that thought off and smiled at her.

“Miss Ruth. It’s good to see you.”

***

When Rose made it back in at the end of the day, Kathleen was glaring at her.

“Where the hell have you been?” she railed at her.

“You told me to leave!”

“That was hours ago. And Declan is dead. He’s gone.” She was a little shrill. “You need to start pulling your weight around here or I’ll have you out. I never wanted you here…”  
Rose ignored what she was saying and ran to Uncle Declan’s room, choking back tears. There was no one there. The room looked like it had been cleared of all traces of him. How had she worked this fast? Maybe it was a lie and he had just left. Maybe he had gone out looking for her. Maybe he had gotten tired of Kathleen. He wouldn’t have left Rose behind. He couldn’t have. 

She started to search the room, hoping to find some indicator that what she was saying wasn’t true. 

Under the mattress, the tiniest edge of an envelope was peeking out, and she seized it desperately. 

Ripping it open, she unfolded the paper within and read it.

“My beautiful Rose,  
My time is at an end, and I fear that Kathleen may do something awful, like throw you out. It wrenches my soul that I am unable to protect you, but there is a man who may be able to, God willing.  
I give you again this address: 55 North 15th Street, Room #65. Tell him who you are, although I do not doubt that he already knows. He was always a smart man. Perhaps, in some ways, he was far smarter than I.  
You remain always, my pretty Irish girl, and I will see you again in Our Lord’s Heaven.  
Your Uncle,  
Declan Toole”

Tiny clouds appeared on the face of the letter, and Rose sucked in a breath. 

She couldn’t stand around here, waiting for Kathleen to throw her out. It was time to go to this man and at least see what he had to say. It was time to meet Elam Ferguson.

***

She crept up the stairs of the rooming house, staring around herself at the tiny, chipped doors. It looked much poorer than what she was used to, and she became suddenly conscious of what Declan had been shielding her from all these years. But why would he send her here if he didn’t think this was a safe place to be?

He had to trust this Ferguson man implicitly. Either that, or he now had no other choice and this had been a last attempt to save the girl he’d raised as a daughter.  
Well, it was going to have to be now or never. 

She rapped on the door and stood back, putting her hands on her hips and trying to look proper, wanting this man to be proud of her. She waited, pulled up her foot, then impatiently knocked again.

The door opened, and she watched as a tall black man with a beard appeared.

She rocked on the balls of her feet. Elam must be very rich to have a servant answering his door. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“Hello,” she said breathily, “Is Elam Ferguson there?”

He stared back at her. 

“I’m Elam Ferguson. Who’s asking for me?”

She stared at him and blinked. 

A lot of things, in the next few seconds, began to make sense. The way that Declan had chided her for laughing at the racist jokes of her young friends. The way he’d fallen over himself to be polite to everyone, no matter their color, even as it seemed like he was fighting with his very nature. The few times Rose had met her grandparents, they had had no such qualms.

She started to rock on the balls of her feet. She hadn’t been prepared for this; why hadn’t Declan prepared her for this?

Her throat felt like sandpaper as she mumbled, “My name is Rose. Rose Toole.”

Elam opened the door a little wider, looking her up and down.

“Rose,” he repeated softly.

“Can I come in? I… This is…” She didn’t have a word for it. There hadn’t been a word created yet to describe what she was feeling right now. This man might be her father, could be… But she didn’t look a thing like him, and she didn’t know him. Not like she knew Uncle Declan. And this man was from some completely different world. He had to be, didn’t he? She had never even gone to school with anyone outside of her small Irish niche. She didn’t know quite how to behave.

“Yes, you can come in.” His voice stayed low.

She slowly stepped into the room. There wasn’t any going back now, but she couldn’t go back, anyway. It wasn’t as if Kathleen was going to be waiting up, worried sick about her.   
Rose looked around the room. It was bare – there was not a book or a souvenir of any type in the room, just a tiny desk. 

“So, you’ve been here all along,” she said finally. “Looking after me. Is this really… are you really?” 

“As real as I’m standin’ here, talking to you right now,” Elam replied, “You’re the baby girl that Eva gave away.”

“But why? If you two were so…” She couldn’t think of a word for it, “That you’d travel all the way here… It must have taken you years to find me.”

“It did.”

“Then why did she give me away to somebody else? If you loved me?”

Elam rubbed at his face and looked back at her.

“I was away. I was… I don’t even remember what I was doing. We had only just named you… I… I had only just named you. But there was an outbreak… a horrible disease. And before that, you… you got kidnapped and we only just got you back. It was too much for Eva. She thought it was the best thing for you. But I left, looking for something, for someone, and then I came back, but I came back wrong. Then I wandered… and I found you. I found you, and you found me.”

Rose stared at him and sighed.

“So… what do we do now? We can’t stay here. My aunt is here, and she hates me. She’s awful. If she knew, she’d find a way to ruin it just to get to me… just for fun.”

“Then we’ll need to leave.”

Rose’s eyes went wide. 

“Where will we go?” she asked, then exclaimed suddenly, “Oh! Can we go back to where I was born? Where Eva… where my mother lives? I need to meet her! I mean… If you’re… and I’m… was she?”

Elam chuckled. 

“She was white, Rose,” he explained softly, “And I’d love to go back to be with Eva. But it’s not that easy. She may still be in the town I left, but she may not. It may take years to find her again. She may not even be…”

“But oh, no! If you’re alive, then she’s got to be!” Rose exclaimed, “It’s got to be true!”

Elam shook his head.

“I wish I had your heart. But I don’t. Nothin’s ever come to me the right way. Nothin’ ever come to me for free.”

“Maybe now is when it’s meant to start…”

“How am I even supposed to take you back to Cheyenne?” Elam asked, “People’ll be hittin’ the roof if they see me walking alongside you.”

“Maybe not,” Rose retorted, clinging on to the idea that presented itself in her head. “I could pretend you were, you know, a servant. My servant. Takin’ me across the country on Uncle Declan’s orders.” Her face fell. “They won’t find out, you know, a while.”

“Rose…” Elam started. “It’s risky. It’s damn risky… They’ll probably string me up if they catch me…”

Rose looked at him, crestfallen.

“If Aunt Kathleen catches up with me, I’m… Well, she would take me back… and I would be stuck back there and I wouldn’t ever see you again. I don’t know anything about Cheyenne but it has to be better than here… But if we’re going to leave… we’re going to have to leave now.”

Elam sighed.

“I have a feeling that this isn’t coming to any good end… But…” He looked at her. “I traveled all this way for you… and right now… my life is lived. If I die over this…” He slowly looked away from her. “You’ll have to forget me and move on, if that happens.”

“It won’t!” Rose pleaded, “I’ll talk my way out of it. I’ll say anything you need me to say. I won’t leave you. After all this… I mean… You came all this way for me. You waited for me. You wanted to be… in my life…”

Elam looked down.

“It’s not like my life has been worth much since I left,” he admitted. “Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever be free, not really. Sometimes I think I was bought and paid for, my soul… All of me, and there ain’t no way to get out. But having a family that’s mine, you and Eva… It could be like it was supposed to be. And I’ll try not to hate Declan Toole, ‘cause it seems as if he raised you right, that he raised you not to be… Not to be like the other ones.”

“Other… white people you mean?” Rose inquired. Elam shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter now. We need to get down to the railroad and see if we can even do this… That is if your aunt hasn’t already set the hounds on our tails.”

***

Elam was looking around the station, ready to fight if he had to. Whether he would actually win would be another question entirely, but he didn’t want to go down without a fight. Part of him was quite sure that this was another trick fate was setting up for him, letting him meet Rose and letting her need him just to snatch her away as it had before.   
He watched as Rose made her way, ever so properly, up to the window. He saw her gesturing with her hands, indicating the number of tickets she needed, and hopefully coming up with a plausible enough story. He wished he could have walked up with her, but that would have been far too forward for a servant or butler or whatever fiction Rose was pulling. Fiction, however, was pretty close to what he was thinking this was going to be, anyway. What did he think he had to find when they got back to Cheyenne? Did he really think Eva would be there, waiting for him, like he had never left?

If she was alive (and these days, life was a commodity that was in very short supply) she had probably married another man and had more babies. Babies that she would keep this time, because she would have moved on from all of this horror. She would be the woman that she had always wanted to be. She would be the woman who had married Toole. 

The woman who had led Toole to believe that Rose was his child. 

But he couldn’t stay here. He had to know, once and for all. The idea that he and Eva were even still breathing the same air, be it states and miles away, kept him going.  
The idea that maybe, for once, something would be right. He’d wake up and see something other than blood and dirt and callouses over his hands. Hear something other than the sound of the drums beating against his head.

Close his eyes and not see himself being nearly ripped to shreds by a bear.

“Elam.” A voice cut off what he had been thinking. “I did it. Here are our tickets.”

***

“This stop, Cheyenne. Cheyenne, this stop. All aboard.”

Rose must have been sleeping, but she had been keeping her eyes open, trying to see all of the possible sights out of the window. She’d also tried to talk to Elam, more than once, but he had stayed pretty tight-lipped. She figured he didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that they were together. People had been turning and looking at them, though thankfully no one had asked a question yet – maybe they believed her “servant” story. 

She stood up, wondering how spitting mad Aunt Kathleen must be that she had taken off instead of coming back and begging.

“Come now, Rose,” Elam said quietly, disembarking the train and looking around, eyes wide. “When I left, this place was basically a hole in the ground.”

“I’m glad it’s not still a hole in the ground…” Rose said. “But it’s not exactly New York City, either.”

“Well, you asked for different… This is going to be pretty different.”

Rose nodded, wondering suddenly what she had thought, coming all this way. She hadn’t really thought it out, had she? What was she supposed to do out here in Cheyenne?

Not that she really had a choice now. Now, all that was ahead was the future.

***

Eva and Ruth were sitting in front of the church, deep in conversation.

“Eva… I have the strangest feeling,” Ruth spoke up.

“A good feeling or a bad one?” Eva asked, reluctantly. “I’ve had enough bad feelings to last me a lifetime.” She brushed some dirt off of her dress.

“I don’t know,” Ruth admitted, “Just a feeling.”

Light came streaming down as she looked up at the horizon. 

She thought she caught a glimpse of someone from long ago.

She turned to tell Eva, but her mouth was already open.

She didn’t know what to tell her. She didn’t know what to tell herself.

“The prodigal son returns,” she whispered. 

_And the prodigal daughter._

Being ready wasn’t an option. But it was coming. Everything was.

THE END


End file.
